Terrorism
April 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
An initial hearing has been conducted in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s criminal case. It was held at Tsarnaev’s hospital bedside, with the prosecutor, a court-appointed defense lawyer and a federal magistrate in attendance. Tsarnaev’s rights were explained, and he apparently uttered a word or two. You can read the transcript of the bedside hearing here. I found it rather bizarre. Tsarnaev has apparently been questioned, to some degree, although no substantive interrogation
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April 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A knowledgeable reader writes from Boston: You may already know this, but the ISB mosque in Cambridge referenced in your Power Line post has a long history, and the group I belong to has been part of it. You can learn more at this Web site. It will be very interesting to see what turns up from various investigations, including our own. As for the Boston Globe, they have responded
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April 21, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Supporters of the Schumer-Rubio comprehensive immigration reform legislation are arguing that enacting this bill into law will make America safer. Dick Durbin made the argument on Meet The Press today, and it seems to be emerging as a Gang of Eight talking point. Durbin cited four aspects of the Schumer-Rubio bill that, he claims, will maker us safer: (1) securing the border (allegedly), (2) allowing 11 million people to come
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April 21, 2013 — John Hinderaker
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, we are suffering through the inevitable period of liberal hand-wringing. Liberals can’t help themselves: while normal people are reviling the bombers, celebrating their capture or death, and debating measures that can be taken to prevent future atrocities, liberals’ thinking (if you can call it that) goes in a different direction. Liberals call for understanding; tell the rest of us we don’t realize
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April 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Roger Simon comments regarding the Marathon bombers: [W]e have the worst possible president to deal with the situation. And even after an event as heinous as Boston, he is supported by a media desperate to preserve his narrative at all costs. It’s already started. On Saturday the Boston Globe published an article titled — I kid you not — “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks.” (Don’t look
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April 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In his five years with the Minnesota Twins, David “Big Papi” Ortiz struck me as a player with awesome potential who persistently underperformed, partly as a result of injuries and partly as a result of poor coaching. The Twins sought to turn him into a singles hitter. As he put it, “They tried to make me hit like a girl!” There’s actually a lot of that going around. Regardless of
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April 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Steve’s Week In Pictures was especially entertaining today. Here are three more: one serious, one funny, and one–I think–bogus. First, the serious one, which comes from the Daily Mail. Yesterday police raided an apartment near the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attended. The students who lived in the apartment are friends of Tsarnaev and, although this is not clear, reports suggest he may have lived there. The
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April 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Over the coming days, we will learn a great deal about the Tsarnaev brothers. One question that will be on everyone’s mind–especially after the revelation, last night, that the FBI interviewed the elder brother a couple of years ago at the request of a foreign government, presumably Russia, that thought he had radical associations–is whether the brothers acted alone, or were part of a larger group that gave them training
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April 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama’s statement last night on events in Boston (with postscript on the Texas catastrophe) conveys at its heart the obligatory multicultural teaching: Obviously, tonight there are still many unanswered questions. Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help?
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April 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The injuries and deaths resulting from the Boston rampage of the brothers Tsarnaevev won’t be lost in our relief over the capture of Tsarvaev the younger without further mayhem last night. The Boston Globe provides a brief profile of the MIT police officer “who was gunned down by the savages who perrpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing,” as Peter Wehner aptly puts it. Wehner directs attention to the Boston Globe story
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April 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
AEI’s lead Russia scholar, Leon Aron, has this, in part, to say: Islamic radicals have been very active in Chechnya since the early 2000s, when the Chechen independence movement truly radicalized into a fundamentalist movement. Since then, there have been several large attacks in Russia, such as the Beslan school siege in 2004 and the Nord Ost theater attack in 2002. Several Chechens were sent to Guantanamo. . . .
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April 19, 2013 — Steven Hayward
While this story continues to unfold in front of us, we have enough information to pose a few questions. A popular theme on the Left (Rev. Wright, etc.) but also among a few on the libertarian Right, is that Islamic terrorism against the U.S. and its allies is “blowback” for our support of Israel, the Iraq War, and so forth. But just what beef do Chechnyans have with America? To
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April 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
NRO has a good compilation of information about the two brothers suspected (for very good reason) of setting off the explosives in Boston. As Scott noted, they apparently are of Chechen origin. And apparently they are Muslims. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, is quoted in a photo essay as saying that he doesn’t drink or smoke anymore because “God said no alcohol.” He also complained that “there are no values anymore,”
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April 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The FBI’s release of photos of the two suspects in the Marathon bombing has precipitated climactic events in the manhunt. Marathon bombing suspect number 1 is dead and suspect 2 is on the loose in the Boston area. The two engaged in a shootout or two with police last night after they killed an MIT security officer. A second officer is in critical condition. Suspect number 1 was treated at
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April 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Andrew McCarthy reminds us that the grand strategy of President Obama involves an inability to sort out our friends from our enemies: The president is mulishly determined to cultivate Islamic-supremacist governments and movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. The stubborn problem is that al Qaeda — the only Muslim outfit the administration seems willing to hang the “terrorist” label on — is also Islamic-supremacist. That is, al Qaeda is adherent to
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April 18, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
There are two suspects and the quality of some of the photos is pretty good — better than what you see on the Fox News website. The photos will be posted on the FBI’s website, but apparently have not been posted there yet. The suspects appear to be Caucasian. At least one of them looks like he might be Middle Eastern, but it’s not clear that he is. UPDATE: Here,
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April 18, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Probably not. Recall, to cite just one recent example, how the news media got virtually every fact wrong during the first hours and days after the Newtown shootings. Still, the media’s Boston performance has been atrocious, to the point where the FBI released a statement chiding the press: [C]ontrary to widespread reporting, there have been no arrests made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. … Over the past day
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